Posted on 10/29/2017 3:06:47 PM PDT by topher
2006 ISBN for DVD: 0024543234692
2008 ISBN for BLURAY: 0024543519782
This was produced by Weintrub/Kuhn.
In May 2004, 63 World War II Vets talking about 94th Infantry Division.
Some were part of ASTP - Army Specialized Training Program. But these soldiers were promised they would not have to fight, be made officers, and go to college.
They considered that ASTP stood for: Always Safe Till Peacetime
The Battle of the Bulge changed all that. The XX Corps was the Troops left behind and stripped of Armor and most of its artillery.
The XX Corps was composed of 3 divisions with 94th Infantry being one of them. This 15,000 man division included 3000 members of the ASTP.
The 2nd Disc is regular DVD format - even with BluRay.
They were basically given an impossible task by Patton, which documented. And they sustained very heavy losses.
The movie Hell is for Heroes has a eerie similarity to this story.
This is on the Documentary section of the 2nd Disc.
>>Some were part of ASTP - Army Specialized Training Program. But these soldiers were promised they would not have to fight, be made officers, and go to college.
I always heard that the ASTP was a program to recruit men to become aviation officers when daylight bombing was not going well and the Army was worried about depleting the possible pilot/bombardier pool stateside. Once air cover got good enough to protect the bombers and the Pacific War was proving to not be so costly for the Army, they turn the unit into an infantry unit and sent it to Europe.
They were never promised that they’d never see battle. If the program had gone full term because of continuing combat losses at the 1942 rate and a war that stretched on for whatever reason, they would have been flying daylight bombing missions over Germany or Japan and dying by the planeloads.
The Army Specialized Training Program was to ensure the
production of specialists who might or might not ultimately be commissioned. The specialties were chiefly scientific, engineering, medical, and linguistic, all non combat arms.There was never any official mention of avoiding combat,
I have the history of my Father’s Combat Engineer Battalion. They were at the Battle of the Bulge but very fortunate.
They were engaged in timber and sawmill operations when their CO was asked if he could move the Battalion to a certain place on the day the battle began.
He replied that they could and did so. They were sent to a location where as it turned out, the Germans did not attack.
I’m glad your Dad made it through. They did cut a lot of timber during that battle and it helped tremendously.
My father was an Army Combat Engineer and was also in the Battle of the Bulge. Not only did he see combat, he said everything was so chaotic — everybody shooting everywhere — he became separated from his battalion. He was wounded there.
He told us their job in the war was to go on commando missions and sneak past the front line where they would secure beachheads on the rivers. They had to build the bridges in time for the troops to catch up with them. He resented the way the infantry would deride them as “ditch diggers” as they crossed over the bridges the Engineers had just shed blood to secure and build.
When the troops had passed over, the Engineers disassembled the bridges and proceeded to the next river. The troops didn’t know they were crossing the same bridges over and over and would probably have been trapped if they were forced to retreat.
> My father was an Army Combat Engineer and was also in the Battle of the Bulge. Not only did he see combat, he said everything was so chaotic — everybody shooting everywhere — <
The great comedian Mel Brooks is a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. When asked about the battle, he said it was very noisy and he could hardly get any reading done.
By the way, like your father, Brooks was a Combat Engineer. He was with the 1104th Engineer Combat Group.
http://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/Historical-Vignettes/Sports-Entertainment/109-Mel-Brooks/
My uncle was at the battle of the bulge, he hated trees. He was also severely hard of hearing. I never understood why until I watched the Band of Brothers mini series. GOD bless your dad.
Thank you for your post. But since you mentioned the Battle of the Bulge, I think your post was meant for Jeff Chandler (post #7). His father was at the Battle of the Bulge, not mine.
My father was on an escort carrier in the Atlantic at the time.
My step-dad was also an Army Combat Engineer, in the 296th Combat Engineering Battalion, and built bridges all the way across Europe. At the start of the Battle of the Bulge, most combat engineer battalions were pressed into infantry duty. The 296th was no exception, they were present at what is termed North of the Northern Shoulder, at Aachen. They and others defended against the heavy onslaught of a German Panzer Division. They later were sent to the Houffalize area which was the center of the bulge.
Thanks topher.
review of the book:
http://www.historynet.com/book-review-pattons-ghost-corps-by-nathan-n-prefer-ww2.htm
it’s an odd job to have... one of my late father’s cousins was married to a Briton who had previously served in combat in WWI, but by WWII was a US citizen and was in the service as a CB, in the Pacific. They had to basically sneak ashore to adapt shoreline terrain and flora to accommodate the landings of, for example, large forces of Marines. Often the Japanese were already on the island, doing the same kinds of things, or were on the island in force, digging in their bunkers and whatnot, and either way, had snipers taking shots at the CBs.
In France, the legacy road system was all there was, making the Sherman tank (for all its faults) ideally suited for combat. It was fast, and as we know who’ve seen one, tall and thin, which made it pretty simple to move through those crooked little village streets, country lanes, and the alleged roads which lay between the hedgerows. Once the Normandy landings and subsequent beachheads had punctured the skin, the Germans faced the difficult task of trying to move back across the landscape under fire and with technically superior armor which was stuck using specific routes that would accommodate them.
Regarding those Army Combat Engineers, when the Battle of the Bulge started, it was a 26 division attack (conjured upp out of nothing, seemingly) during the winter, and the supply bottleneck had squeezed off much of the main advance, including that of the 3rd Army, which had to park and wait for the success (failure) of Market Garden.
Joachim Peiper remarked, of the 291st Engineer Combat Battallion, “those damned engineers!” I sure that was echoed throughout the command structure of the German Antwerp Offensive.
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